California funds pesticides PR blitz

When the Environmental Working Group put out its annual list of the fruits and vegetables most saturated with pesticides in their most commonly consumed form, the industry took note. One mainstream agricultural group, the Alliance for Food and Farming, countered that the fear of pesticides was driving Americans to eat less produce, and that was the real health problem.

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The AFF has now gottena share of a $17.5-million federal grant divvied up by the California Department of Food and Agriculture* — your tax dollars — specifically to fight its PR war against the Environmental Working Group and other sustainable ag advocates.

The same agricultural conglomerates that claim they can’t go organic because it costs to much are now spending your money trying to persuade you that pesticides are safe. Put another way, the same big businesses that oppose regulation because, they say, consumers regulate with their spending decisions are spending your money to tell you how to spend your money.

Or, as Ken Cook, president of the EWG, put it, “I think most taxpayers would say this is exactly the kind of thing they don’t want their money spent on … If these well-heeled corporate farming interests want to talk people out of buying organic or low-pesticide food, they ought to spend their own money to do it.”